Paul Henreid is not a name that gets mentioned a lot on
Trophy Unlocked. The last time was in reference to his role as Victor Lazlo in
Casablanca (1942), but he did have a successful career in Hollywood. An émigré
from Austro-Hungary, Henreid began making films in Germany, appearing in such
films as Dawn (1933) and The Secret of Cavelli (1934) before moving to Great
Britain in 1935. When World War II began in 1939, Henreid faced deportation as
an enemy alien before fellow actor Conrad Veidt, who would also later co-star in Casablanca,
spoke up for him.

After appearing in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) and Night Train
to Munich (1940), RKO brought him to
the U.S. under contract. In typical Hollywood fashion, Paul von Hernried became
the much simpler name: Paul Henreid. In
1942, he appeared opposite Bette Davis in Now, Voyager and Casablanca. After
that, he would appear in several films including Hollywood Canteen (1944), Of
Human Bondage (1946) and Song of Love (1947) before wanting to try his hand at
producing. His one and only credit as a producer was Hollow Triumph (1948),
also known as Scar in the U.K.

Following Song of Love, which he made at MGM, he was being
pursued by that studio for a long-term contract. But like many actors in
post-World War II, he didn’t like the restrictions that sort of contract placed
on him and he looked for another avenue. Against the wishes of his agent, Lew
Wasserman at MCA, Henreid signed up with Eagle-Lion, the recently formed
American producing arm of J. Arthur Rank. They offered to let him produce as
well as star in his own film. With the financial backing of Robert Young, the
railroad magnate, not the actor, Henreid bought the rights to the novel Hollow
Triumph, written by fellow actor Murray Forbes.

To write the adaptation, Henreid turned to Daniel Fuchs, a
screenwriter responsible for Between The Worlds (1944), a film Henreid had
starred in at Warner Bros. While Fuchs, who was destitute at the time,
initially turned down the job, claiming he didn’t know anything about gangsters
even though he had written the screenplay for The Gangster (1947), Henreid
persisted and Fuchs wrote the screenplay.

When it came to casting the film, Henreid originally wanted
Evelyn Keyes for the role of Evelyn Hahn, the doctor’s secretary. But she was
under contract at the time to Columbia Pictures. In order to lend her, Harry
Cohn wanted to read the script, which impressed him so much, he wanted to buy
it from Henreid. When Henreid turned his offer down, Keyes was no longer
available for loan out.

Enter Joan Bennett, who had recently transformed herself from
blonde ingénue to brunette femme fatale, having starred in two Fritz Lang
films: The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945). But her most
recent film with Lang, Secret Beyond the Door (1948), was a flop and Bennett
was willing to take a chance on an independent studio like Eagle-Lion.

Unlike other film noirs we’ve reviewed lately, this one is
not told in flashback. Rather it opens with John Muller (Paul Henreid) already
in jail. While he is a smart man, having gone to medical school for a time, he
is a crook by nature, having practiced psycho-analysis without a license and
other crimes. Because his brother, Freddie (Eduard Franz), works for the
government, John's parole officer has found him a job at the Meiklejohn company in Los Angeles.
Despite his parole officer’s doubts, John accepts the offer.

John Muller (Paul Henreid) learns of a job waiting for him in Los Angeles from his parole officer.

But before he does, he gets the old gang together for one
more heist. A couple of the men have found regular work, but the promise of a
quick payout is enough for most to go along with John’s plan, which is to rob
the gambling house owned by rival mobster, Rocky Stansyck (Tom Browne Henry).
Stansyck is notorious for holding a grudge when done wrong and one of the gang
members recounts how years after an attempted heist, Stansyck found and killed
one of the robbers in Europe. But John is adamant they can make a clean
getaway.

Once out, John gets his gang back together for one more job.

Things do not go according to plan and only John and Marcy (Herbert
Rudley) make it out. The others, Big Boy (Henry Brandon) and Rosie (Robert Ben
Ali), are caught and questioned and initially told they’re free to go. But
before they’ve gone too far, Stansyck tells one of his hired guns, Bullseye
(Jack Webb), not to let them get away.

On the run, Marcy and John split up. John goes to Los
Angeles to accept the position at Meiklejohn,
while Marcy heads south over the border. John’s work at Meiklejohn is routine
and dull, but he’s safe. His supervisor, though, rides him and makes him go out
on an errand to deliver books to a client. While he’s on the street, he becomes
aware of a man following him. A dentist
named Swangron (John Qualen) mistakes him for a doctor who works in his
building, Dr. Victor Bartok. John pulls
him into an alleyway and works him over just enough to learn the story. John’s
a dead ringer for Dr. Bartok, with the exception that the latter has a long
scar on his left side cheek.

Curious, John goes to Bartok’s office, where Marcy (Joan
Bennett), the doctor’s secretary and lover, mistakes John for Bartok, giving
him a passionate kiss before realizing her error. John stakes out Bartok just
long enough to realize they are doppelgangers for each other.

But John is gone too long from work and gets into a fight
with his supervisor, which gets physical. John is promptly fired. On his way
out, one of his co-workers tells him that Freddie has been there looking for
him.

His brother, Freddie (Eduard Franz), brings John news about
Marcy. He also unknowingly leads Stansyck's men to John.

That night, John goes to visit Freddie in his hotel room,
where he is shown a newspaper with a story about Marcy’s murder in Mexico City.
It is clear that Stansyck’s men have hunted him down. John’s concern that
Stansyck’s men might have followed Freddie to Los Angeles is proven correct when
Bullseye and a sidekick (Dick Wessell) are down the street waiting for
him. John tries to go out through the
alley, but they’re already there. Shots are fired, but John manages to escape.
They almost catch him on Angel’s Flight, but John manages to kick the sidekick
out the back of the moving train car.

John is not happy to see two of Stansyck's henchmen in front of his brother's hotel.

John convinces Evelyn, who is suspicious at first, to go out
with him and she falls in love with what
must be for her a substitute for the man she really loves, Bartok. This allows
John to get into Bartok’s office, where he steals a cancelled check so he can
practice Bartok’s signature. He also studies Bartok’s voice from recordings Bartok
makes for Evelyn to transcribe and he even reads Bartok’s case files. When he
feels he knows everything he needs to, he tells Evelyn that he’s going to Paris
and breaks off his relationship with her.

Meanwhile, John has gotten a job at the Clover Garage where
Bartok parks his car. A full service garage, attendants will accompany a client
to work and then take the car to the garage. Working nights, John narrowly
escapes notice when Bullseye and sidekick show up one night at the garage for
gas. With his days free, John stalks
Bartok, getting a photograph of him, which he uses to meticulously carve a like
scar in his cheek. Only, as we find out, the lab that did the blow up for him
reversed the negative. Instead of his left cheek, the scar is on John’s.

Using a photo, John carves a scar on his face. Too bad he doesn't notice the photo's been flipped.

John waits for his opportunity and when Bartok comes by
early in the morning to get an attendant, John goes with him. When the time is
right, John kills Bartok with a heavy wrench and dumps his body into the river.
It is only as he’s dumping the body that he notices he’s gotten the scar wrong. Undeterred, John assumes Bartok’s identity, takes up his
practice, etc., with no one being any the wiser. Even the dentist who had
followed John earlier takes that moment to tell him about the incident, not
seeing through the ruse.

That night, John receives a call from Virginia Taylor
(Leslie Brooks), a woman Bartok has been seeing, and they meet. She doesn’t
notice the difference and the couple goes to a gambling club called Maxwell’s,
which Bartok apparently frequents and frequently loses at. John notices later
just how bad it is as Bartok has sold many holdings and his bank account is
low.

Freddie returns to Los Angeles looking for John. He starts
out at Meiklejohn and follows his career to Clover. He’s told that after he
handled Dr. Bartok’s car, he quit his job, so Freddie goes to Bartok’s office, hoping he might have some knowledge about what happened to John. Evelyn lets
Freddie wait and when John emerges, Freddie blurts out that he’s his brother.

Freddie may suspect. but he doesn't know that he's talking to his brother in Bartok-mode.

At this point, Evelyn puts two and two together and realizes
what’s happened. She tells Freddie what John had told her, that he moved to
Paris. John pulls her aside and admits to what he’s done. Freddie tells John why he’s looking for him:
Stansyck has been arrested on an income tax charge and will soon be deported.
With his organization broken up, no one is looking for John any longer. John
advises his brother to leave him alone and Freddie leaves.

Evelyn, meanwhile, has gone home to pack. She’s planning on
leaving on a steamship for Honolulu. John shows up and the two argue, with John
hitting her, knocking her off her feet. He promises to renew her faith in love
and join her on the boat. He quickly
makes arrangements to close the office and hurries to the docks. On his way
out, a chairwoman (Mabel Paige) stops him and makes mention that she’d noticed
his scar had moved, but he assures her that she was mistaken, which she
accepts.

Evelyn gives John another chance, even after he hits her.

As Evelyn waits onboard, John is attacked by two thugs (Robert
Bice and Dave Schilling) who work for Maxwell's. They accuse him of welching on
his gambling debts. John insists to the
men that he is not Bartok, even pointing out their scars are on different
cheeks, but the thugs don’t buy it. When John tries to get away, the men shoot
him. The police arrive quickly and the thugs are arrested, but John manages to
limp away. He’s too late for the boat as it starts to depart. Believing she’s
been stood up, Evelyn tearfully goes inside.

Convoluted plots are a real mainstay of film noir and Hollow
Triumph certainly has one of its own. As a contemporary reviewer pointed out, “There
is not quite enough logic in the plot to enable it to stand up under scrutiny,
but the story moves along briskly.” Even though you have to follow along
closely, the movie never really loses you, the way, say, The Big Sleep (1946)
does.

There are holes to be sure; the biggest is the scar. Surely
John would have seen Bartok enough to know which side of his face had the
scar and then when no one seems to notice it’s wrong, you have to wonder what
was the point. Yes, it shows that John is fallible, none of his plans really
work out as planned, but the scar neither gives him away nor saves him in the
end. It’s sort of like this really cool
device that serves no real purpose.

Still, I like the identity theft angle, which is also
nothing new (see Nora Prentiss). But I think Hollow Triumph has an interesting
spin on that as well. The fact that the identity he’s stolen puts John in as
much trouble as his own, if not more, is a great twist.

John Alton, who handled the cinematography, does some very
interesting work with not only light and dark, but also with angles, as this
film literally looks at things differently than most films. Alton’s career dates back to silent films, he
shot backgrounds for Ernst Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
(1927). He was quite in demand with film noirs, shooting several including
T-Men (1947), He Walked by Night (1948), Border Incident (1949), The Crooked
Way (1949) and Mystery Street (1950). He also was the cinematographer on Father
of The Bride (1950), Father’s Little Dividend (1951), worked on An American in
Paris (1951) and Elmer Gantry (1960), so his work was not limited to one
particular genre.

The film utilizes unique locations with interesting angles.

For the most part, I liked Hollow Triumph. One thing against
it though is Paul Henreid himself. Not that he is a bad actor, but his accent
was a little jarring. I’m not saying protagonists can’t have one, but when his
brother doesn’t have one, it seems a little odd. It was also weird to see a man
best known as a romantic lead playing such an undesirable character. Henreid’s fans didn’t really like it much
either and many deserted his fan club as a result.

Paul Henreid in Casablanca, the type of roles his fans wanted him to play.

While Henreid managed to make his own movie, he sort of lost
out overall. His agent, Wasserman, after their disagreements, turned him over
to an assistant to handle and Henreid’s profit sharing for Hollow Triumph was
tied to three other pictures which flopped, so he never received his cut from
that either. Henreid would continue to act in movies and on television, even
directing six features, one, Dead Ringer (1964), starring former Now, Voyager
co-star, Bette Davis.

Joan Bennett’s career was definitely slowing down. After
Hollow Triumph, she would make only 12 more films, including one starring opposite
Spencer Tracy in the aforementioned Father of The Bride and its sequel Father’s
Little Dividend. Her role as Evelyn
seems very uneven. Wisely suspicious, Evelyn, like so many other women
characters in movies at the time, seems so easily swayed into giving even the
worst men a second and third chance, all in the hope of finding true love.
Sadly, it weakens her character, but that was par for the course in those days.

Evelyn seems smart and suspicious until she decides to give John a third chance.

Overall, I would definitely recommend Hollow Triumph. Not
the best film noir, but it’s nice to see an actor try to break out of their mold.
Henreid may not have hit a home run, creatively or financially, but you have to
admire the attempt.